


Soft Dots Drifting By in Darkness

by greebled



Series: Learning To Relax [1]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Claude is still trans but it only comes up in passing, FE3H Kinkmeme, Gen, Marijuana, Recreational Drug Use, alternate universe - dimitri finds meds that work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-02
Updated: 2020-07-04
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:06:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25028983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greebled/pseuds/greebled
Summary: He puts an elbow on the shitty little Ikea coffee table and leans close to the piece, tracing the path with a finger. Dimitri leans in, too, at rapt attention. “It comes down the stem here, filters through the water, and pops out on top. Then it’ll just load up there until you pull the carb out, in the, um...”“The shaft?” Edelgard offers.
Series: Learning To Relax [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1878916
Comments: 20
Kudos: 84





	1. Chapter 1

_I wanna see the lights_  
 _Coming towards us with my glasses off_  
-Dan Deacon, "Learning to Relax"

“This may be a stupid question, but where do the papers go, then?”

“No such thing as stupid questions, my friend! Though, I’m not sure what you mean.”

Dimitri cants his head to the side just a little as he thinks. He’s always done this, even as a little kid, like his thoughts are behind some sort of physical barrier he needs to peek around. “I was under the impression that there was a filter involved. Like a coffee pot, perhaps? I know they sell special papers for… Um. For this purpose.”

“Ohhh,” Claude’s eyes go round in recognition. He’s clearly amused, but he doesn’t laugh at him. “Nah, nah, those are rolling papers, for joints. They’d go on the outside like a cigarette. Totally separate thing.”

“Then what is to stop everything from getting sucked into the water?”

“Magic, if I had to guess.”

“Ah, I see. And what is to stop the water from going up and getting everything too wet to burn?”

“Also magic. But also, probably, the stem is just too teeny tiny. Surface tension, or something, only breaks enough to let the smoke through when you suck on it.” He puts an elbow on the shitty little Ikea coffee table and leans close to the piece, tracing the path with a finger. Dimitri leans in, too, at rapt attention. “It comes down the stem here, filters through the water, and pops out on top. Then it’ll just load up _there_ until you pull the carb out, that's that thing there, in the, um...”

“The shaft?” Edelgard offers.

Claude cracks up so abruptly he nearly headbutts the hideous thing. During this entire impromptu lesson in Bongs 101, no one has commented on the fact that their example is not only over a foot tall, but cast in more tender loving detail than any faux penis Edelgard has ever seen, and buddy, that is saying something. This monstrosity has _veins._ Dimitri hit terminal awkwardness velocity long before it even graced them with its presence, but now that the elephant in the room has been addressed, he puts a fist to his mouth and looks away.

“Yeah, exactly! Thanks a bunch, El.”

If she wasn’t already certain this was an elaborate joke at her expense, Claude’s un-earned fondness would have been the final nail in the coffin. Logically, behind the haze of crabbiness, she knew that it made total sense for him to call her whatever Dimitri calls her. But, it’s late and she’s excruciatingly sober. She’s been trying to sleep since _nine._ So, it comes out a lot more accusatory than she would like when she, well, accuses: “Claude. This _can’t_ be the only piece you have.” Predictably, it makes Dimitri squirm a lot harder than her target. Edelgard has never been great at avoiding collateral damage.

Claude sighs, giving the nuts of his monstrosity a woeful pat. “’Fraid it is, princess. It’s just me and Richard here against the world. Besides,” He gave her a smug look that made her want to strangle him. “One would think if someone is so desperate she’s willing to call her straight-edge _ex_ -stepbrother, at _two in the morning_ , to ask if his roommate is feeling _generous_...”

“Claude, please,” Dimitri intervenes. He gives off an air of someone much more commanding than someone sitting cross-cross-applesauce on the floor. “You’re right. I am sure I was far down on her list of people to ask for help. That is all the more reason to be kind to her.” He straightens his back, but his voice still warbles as he continues. “So, if you have any weed pieces that are not... _Penises_ ,” he makes a grand gesture. “By all means!”

Dimitri sits across the table from him, Edelgard perched on the couch behind, and maybe it’s being the meat in a disapproving sandwich that takes some of the wind out of Claude’s sails. “Al _right_ , jeez,” he cedes. “I meant it, though. This is all I got. It’d make me nervous to have to make sure I was hiding more than one bong all the time. And, if it makes you feel better,” Claude looks over his shoulder, and if Edelgard didn’t know any better, she would swear she could see genuine sympathy on it. “He was a gift, and I’m pretty sure it was meant to mock me, too.”

She still isn’t sure she buys it, but the longer they bicker, the longer she has to stay here. With a resigned sigh, she removes her arm from her tight ball of limbs. Claude brightens and hands it right over. There is more than enough room on its ample length for their hands to not touch.

Dimitri hums, clearly trying to think of something to talk about because there’s no regular way to watch her do this. He messes with his bangs and looks at Claude. “Thank you. I suppose I could have asked her to bring her own.”

“Don’t mention it,” he replies, smiling all big and easy. “Bet you anything El vapes, anyway.”

“You can-” The sound of the bong burbling startles him, makes him glance over quickly before remembering it’s in the shape of a big dick and looking back away. “You can _vape_ it?”

Claude folds his arms behind his head, leaning against the couch. “If you’re a wimp, sure.” Edelgard wants to defend herself, say something about how she has much different motives for getting high than he does, but she can’t while fellating this sleepytime dong. It’s for the best that she can’t. From what she’s heard about him, he wouldn't leave it alone if she did. She pulls the carb and takes the hit, smoke dense enough that it makes Claude’s eyebrows raise. It’s been a while, but she manages not to cough using the power of spite alone. “Or… Maybe it’s because she’s got roommates with asthma and she’s polite.”

The smirk she gives him seems to intimidate him as much as she hoped it would. “Nice save, Claude.”

A glance at the dick in her hands shows that there’s still a little smoke left in there, swirling lazily just over the water. Edelgard isn’t confident that it won’t tickle her throat and ruin her show of force. That, and she can already feel the high hitting her at a speed she isn’t used to. So, she offers it back to Claude, holding it by the head. She gives it a little shake. “Do you wanna clear it?”

He scoffs at her, waving his hand in its direction. “ _What?_ You wouldn’t offer someone the last sip of a beer, would you?”

“I wouldn’t, this is different. It’s not any more contact than if you lit it yourself, right?”

His face is all scrunched up. “But it is weird and intimate, right?”

“Says the one with the dick-shaped bong!” It really had been just an offer before, but now it’s a matter of principle. “Just take it.”

“Eeeuugh, but-”

“I could have it.”

Dimitri nearly tips over backwards with how abruptly he becomes the center of attention.

Blinking owlishly, Edelgard holds the bong a bit closer to herself. “Dimitri, I didn’t know you smoked.”

“I can’t say I’ve had the opportunity before, no, but, ah,” he says. His brow is furrowed in… Something.

Before he can find what it is, Claude is grinning at him. “I never thought I’d see the day! Are you sure? I like you, but I dunno if I’ll be able to forgive ya if you eat all my snacks.”

“Or if I have the energy to calm you down if it gives you a panic attack.”

“Oh, no! Good point!” Claude snickers, looking back at Edelgard. “Or if we can put your ego back together if you text your crush something dumb.”

Edelgard doesn’t laugh, but she does fight back a smile and look away. “True. I doubt we’d be able to pick you up if you fall asleep somewhere.” He’s not even high and Claude still can barely contain himself.

“Aw, jeez, what if-”

“What if!? _What_ if!” Dimitri’s voice comes as a bark, and when they both gawk, he lowers the volume but not the venom. “What if it would be _fine_ , because I am an _adult_. What if it was a minor mess, but that was alright. What if the only reason I have not tried it before,” he takes in a shuddering breath. “Is because of people’s assumptions about what I can and can-not handle?” Both of them open their months now, but he isn’t finished. He puffs out his chest, icy eye narrowed. “Answer me, why is it that Claude can stumble home _blind drunk_ and wet _my_ bed, and yet no one thinks, “Ah, no more parties for Claude.””

“Man, that only happened _once!”_

“And I have eaten all of your food, and made you two carry me around, and texted absurd things to my crush for you to clean up after...” Dimitri pauses for effect. Edelgard wonders when he learned to do that. He crosses his arms. “Zero times!”

“Yeah, but, that thing you do, when-!”

That was… Too few things. Right? Right. Dimitri is missing something, and she’s hung up on that as the rest of her crumbles to pleasant dust. She thinks back as the argument veers from the deeply personal grievances Dimitri’s been shouldering to mundane roommate nonsense. Probably. She isn’t actually absorbing any of it. Goddess, she was stoned. She was used to leisurely vaping over a long period of time, not trying to knock herself out as fast as she could in one breath. Ugh. This was too much.

Edelgard noticed the smoke left over in the bong for, certainly, the first time, and cleared it herself.

Huh.

She let her head tip back against the soft (soft, soft…) couch and zoned out.

Wait, keep it together, El! She curled and uncurled her toes to ground herself. Okay. What did Dimitri miss?

Food.

Panic attacks.

Sleeping.

Crush.

Panic attacks! That was it! She brought up worrying about him freaking out, and he detoured right around it. She wondered why that _was_ , and the answer came to her like an ice cube being thrown down the back of her shirt.

She remembered hanging up the phone before, being surprised at how calm and gentle his tone had been. She was here right now because she had made the mistake of sleeping unassisted for the first time in _months_. She would get more weed tomorrow, but her night terrors didn't care. Her voice must have been shaking; she knew it must have been, because she called him because she couldn’t coordinate her fingers enough to text. And, she called _him_ , instead of anybody else, because he already knew why she’d be calling, and he wouldn’t tell a soul.

“Dimitri?”

Sometime between then and now, the argument had devolved into a pillow fight. Dimitri was winning, of course, since he was twice his combatant’s size and four times as angry. The throw pillow Claude had been using was knocked out of his reach. It wasn’t until Edelgard fell over sideways into the bare, crumb-filled dip of the couch that she pieced together Dimitri had stolen an entire cushion to use as his weapon. He straddled Claude’s waist, mercilessly and wordlessly fwomping him with it.

“Okay! You win! I’ll unload the dishwasher more often! Hey! Are you even listening? Ow! It doesn't even matter what I say, does it!?”

She isn’t sure how she manages it, but somehow Edelgard rights herself and gets up without spilling a drop of water. Her hand hovers over Dimitri’s shoulder briefly before she can track it enough to take hold. He freezes, blinks. “Dimitri, stop it.” He drops the pillow on Claude’s face ( _“mmpf!”_ ), and turns to look at her. It isn’t often she sees him from an angle other than Up There – Not that she’s seen him at _any_ angle in years.

After an absolute trainwreck of a divorce, they completely lost touch. It wasn’t until they bumped into each other on their way to class that they had any idea they were at the same school. Dimitri had been thrilled, because Edelgard reminded him of the times before that whole mess. Edelgard, however, associated him only with the trauma surrounding the event, even though none of it had been his fault. So, she carved out her distance, and Dimitri was quick enough to see himself as a villain to let her keep it.

It all fell into place in this wave of cosmic clarity. They shared a meaningful look. Or, at least it was meaningful on Edelgard’s end. For Dimitri, she was just kind of staring at him. “El? Are you alright?” It would have to do for now.

She gave a sage nod. Then, carefully, she pressed the hideous cock-and-bong and lighter into Dimitri’s hands. “Here. Take it. I’m sorry I looked down on you,” she offers a slight, fond smile. “I guess I never really stopped thinking of you as a little brother.”

_Now_ they were sharing a meaningful look. Dimitri holds the bong (which, again, shaped like a dick) to his chest like it’s something precious, his eyes twinkling in the low, garbage twinkle lights just kind of thrown on the wall willy nilly. “I… Will forgive you for that,” his voice is a little tight, like he might cry. Edelgard tenses. He better _not_. “Thank you.”

“Hey, uh, that’s mine,” warbled Claude.

Dimitri pulls his shoulders back, eyeing the bong, then his comrades, like a man at war. “I remember what Claude said, but did not watch you do it. Please let me know if there is something I am missing.”

Edelgard, tired of being vertical, sits back on the table. She stands by what she said, embarrassing as it was, but Dimitri carries this energy of stuffy innocence with him regardless of their ties. He can't possibly get out much, and hasn’t seemed to really make connections other than ones foisted upon him at a young age. She feels like she’s corrupting him, somehow, even though she’s not even a full year his senior. But, she acknowledges his autonomy, and gives him a barely-visible nod. Her head still swims a little. “Of- Of course. I’d like to add that you shouldn’t force yourself to inhale very much yet. Just a little, then see how you feel.”

Claude grins at Edelgard from underneath Dimitri’s bulk. “Yeah? Why would you say that?” Dimitri fumbles with the lighter, so his ribbing serves a dual purpose of teasing her and taking the pressure off him. “Did someone get a little… _Cocky,_ back there?”

She huffs at that, and goes to cross her arms. They are already crossed. She tilts her chin instead. “I’m _fine_. It was a choice I made to get you off my back.” A smile betrays her face. “So, _ballsy_ would be more accurate, thank you.”

Like this, Claude is almost charming. He lounges, even though he can’t be comfortable, and chuckles low and warm. “Fair enough. You got some lungs on you, that’s for sure, and because of you, our darling baby Dimitri is all grown w’HO-LY _SHIT!”_

Gravely misunderstanding the “suck on it” part of the process, Dimitri takes several inches of the bong into his mouth like it’s nothing.


	2. Chapter 2

_Soft dots, drifting by in darkne_ _ss,_  
 _Just take me out of my mind_  
-Dan Deacon, "Learning to Relax"

After the initial frenzy and mortification and an carefully not-homoerotic bong wipedown, time passed a bit more slowly.

Claude made Dimitri watch him this time. Like, _really_ watch him. Edelgard was dozing off and on, resigned to spending the night on this couch. One of them had thrown a spare fleece at her at some point. It had tiny dragons all over it that became even more blobby if you stroked them the wrong way. Distantly, she knew it must have been a ratty, cheap thing, but it didn’t stop her from melting into a puddle with it around her shoulders. As she tightrope walked between wakefulness and sleep, she evesdropped, trying to gauge which one was blushing harder as they fumbled their crystal dong back and forth. An unrefined palette would say it was Dimitri, for sure, but the way she saw it the difference in skin tone and baseline composure had them tied neck and neck.

There was a lot of Dimitri to intoxicate, and he wasn’t anywhere close as skilled in inhaling smoke as he was at inhaling dicks, so to actually get him to a point where he was feeling it took a lot of patience. Claude was unusually accommodating about this. He just kept walking him through it and didn’t comment on the volume of pot wasted from his rookie mistakes. He even rubbed his back when he did manage to take his first heavy hit and nearly shook himself apart with wheezy little half-coughs.

Hmm. Why was this display making Edelgard feel all protective, all of a sudden?

“There we go!” During this process, Claude also had to smoke faster than he’d planned. It made his movements bumbly, his whole body wiggling with each pat. Dimitri was built like a brick shithouse and didn’t budge at all.“That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

“Gah,” replied Dimitri, his face still tucked in his own shoulder to muffle himself. He blindly reaches forward with the bong, placing it on the table, on a coaster.

Claude removed his hand so he could lean back, all smiles. “So? How ya feeling? Do you need water or anything? A tissue, maybe?”

He’s still coughing, folded into himself, making himself as small as he can, but he holds up a hand to cut Claude off. “St, _hh_ , stop. Slow down,” he croaks. He rubs his entire face like he’s trying to paw away a headache. “I am still… Hkk. I am still working on your first question.”

He giggles at that, drawing his legs in. “Sorry, sorry. Take your time, champ.”

Dimitri heaves a big sigh, taking his lungs on a test spin. His hand remains at his face for a long, long while, rubbing his temples like he’s just discovered them. Eventually, he lowers it to his lap, stares at the table before him, and keeps staring, for at least a minute, before looking back over to his roommate. He raises an eyebrow, clears his throat. “...Claude, what are you looking at?”

“Aw-ha, El, we lost him,” he says, and the fake pity in it seems to annoy Dimitri even through the seventeen square feet of packing peanuts between his thoughts and the outside world. He just looks so cartoonishly incredulous – nose scrunched and the line of his mouth hitched in an uncharacteristic pout – that Edelgard can’t help snickering along with him. When he hears her, he wheels in her direction like an animal, eye all round with the fear of being the butt of a joke he’s not in on.

She has to close her eyes so she can’t see him if she wants to keep from full-on laughing. Claude doesn’t hold back at all. “Huh? Hey, what? Wh-what’s funny?” Affected as he is, he sounds legitimately rattled by this.

It’s still pretty funny, but it does make her realize that this might be a completely different experience for someone whose grip on reality could already be a bit tenuous. The full onset of his condition hit him during the gap in their relationship, but she heard enough about it through the grapevine to know there was a minute there when he really could have been lost forever, a terrified, furious minotaur haunting the labyrinth in his own head.

So, she used her inhuman strength to shove her own stoner snickers aside as much as she could. Shaking her head still sounds like a bad idea, so she waves her hands a little, comfortingly, she hopes. “Sorry, I’m sorry, Dimitri, you’re alright, you didn’t go anywhere. You’re fine.” She hears how dumb she sounds and can still feel the humor bubbling behind it, but it seems good enough for Dimitri to lower his hackles. Enough for his eye to phase from pleading back to flickering in its focus. “You’re just zoning out a lot, that's all," a laugh makes it through her defenses. "I've never seen you look so _serious._ "

Dimitri honest-to-goddess _harrumphs_ at that, and Edelagrd can’t help the shaking of her shoulders then. At the very least, his own expression softens with it, listing his gaze back to Claude. He’s on his bad side, so he has to crane his torso to properly judge him. “I always worry I am boring. It’s good to know Claude thinks I am funny even when I do nothing at all.”

The graveness in which he says it sends them both deeper into their barely-contained hysterics. Claude gives him a playful shove, and when Dimitri weeble-wobbles back, Edelgard can see he’s grinning. “I asked you a question, remember? And you said _“Ah, I am working on it...”_ ” Claude’s voice doesn’t go anywhere near as low as Dimitri’s, but the cadence is spot on. “ _Were_ you? _Were_ you working on it?”

Dimitri rocks forward, laughs like he’s out of practice, all breathy and almost silent. “I don’t- What did you ask? I am very sorry but, I... Refresh my memory, please!”

Edelgard attempts to show him some mercy, but she can’t get her words in order before Claude shoots the target he’s spent the past hour setting up.

“Where the hell’d you learn to take a cock like that, huh?”

Dimitri stops laughing.

Edelgard freezes.

Claude just keeps smiling.

He regards Claude for a long, uncomfortable beat, expression intense but hard to place. He tilts his head at long last. “Claude…” His tone is sweet, like a child has just asked him a stupid but vulnerable question. He puts an excruciatingly chaste hand on his knee. “I do not know what I have done to make you think otherwise, but, er... You... Did not have to drug me to ask if I was gay. I would have just told you.”

This completely, utterly destroys Edelgard. She can’t hear Claude’s backpedaling over her own hysterics. There are tears. She worries she might puke. When she brings her face up from her knees, Dimitri is flat on his back, wheezing with laughter, both hands clumsily pressed on his own face. Claude is dying, too. He grabs the bong. “Whatever!” He puts it near his mouth like a profane mic. “What-ever!”

They polish off the bowl. Dimitri insists he’s good to smoke more, helps with this, and has instant regrets. Edelgard can tell when he stops participating in their inane conversations, his eye all empty, lost in checking his own pulse in his neck and arms. When Claude gets up to get them something to eat, she’s more than high enough to help without the tethers of their fraught past holding her back. She says his name, low and clear, and he takes entirely too much time to look at her. He’s so dizzy.

“Um.” She waits but that’s it. Complete thought.

Edelgard is completely swaddled in her blanket now, but she sticks an arm out into the cold, cruel world to motion him closer. “It’s alright, it happens. It’ll go away soon. Can you come over here?”

Dimitri sighs in a way that implies he thought it would come out as a word, seems to really struggle to focus his limited vision on her hand. There’s a pang of guilt, again; The physical disorientation, too, might also hit different.

“You’re close. I could touch you if my arms weren’t so damned short.”

This comment breaks through the ice, shaking one unfiltered, weak little “hah,” of a laugh from the very top of his chest. He scoots the last few excruciating feet to sit in front of the couch, leaning heavy against it. “Heh heh...”

Edelgard scoffs, adjusting herself to rest low on the armrest. “I know you’re not saying any words, but please shut up,” she says. No doubt unable to look at a moving target, Dimitri just chuckles to himself with his eye closed, his smile wobbly and warm. Still off, but not so scared anymore. From this position, the back of his head rests on her chest. She strokes his hair in slow, steady motions. Something grounding, tethering him to his body and creating some sense of time. All his spring-tight muscles begin to slowly unclench.

“A little better?” The instantaneous effect speaks for itself, but she still asks. He rumbles quietly, letting his head loll into the nook between Edelgard and the armrest. “Good. Don’t worry, this happens to me sometimes, too. It hasn’t been as long as you think it has, I promise.” Another noise of discombobulated affirmation. She cards her fingers through his hair from the roots all the way out, detangling here and there, high enough to get just as lost as he does in it. It could probably use a wash, but his hair was nice and soft, and just the right length to really get her fingers into.

At one point she accidentally, gently snags the leather strap of his patch. It’s a new development, and she hasn’t gotten the chance to ask what could have possibly happened. She can’t help but trace it with her wandering hands, and is about to apologize when she notices he’s leaning into it like a big dog against a trusted person’s legs. She huffs, bemusedly, and rubs with a little more force. “Little itchy, Dimitri?”

Dimitri, now the pleasant kind of too stoned to move, makes a two-note noise that barely leaves his throat.

He looks so comfortable here that her own eyelids start to droop. She has to really fight back her exhaustion to keep playing metronome. She wants to repay him for opening his r/malelivingspaces shithole to her and her nonsense, without question, after she’d treated him so badly, but it’s just impossible.

Claude returns with snacks just as they’re both yawning.

He puts one oven-mitted hand on his hip. “Aw, c’mon, real-” He yawns, then stomps his foot in frustration about that. “Fuck. Really? After all that you’re just gonna sleep it off?”

“Yeah?” Edelgard looks up at him and his oven fries, which do look tempting, but not as tempting as the void. “That’s why I came here t’begin with,”

“Mh. T’was the plan from the start,” Dimitri mumbled in agreement.

Edelgard considers herself used to his aversion to normal contractions and still blinks drunkenly at that one. _“T’was…?”_

Turning his nose up at them, Claude made a show of holding his crummy baking sheet aloft and away. “Well, fine! If you two want to _sibling bond_ and _get some rest_ like a couple of chumps, this snack is gonna take his snacks somewhere where he’ll actually be appreciated!”

“Tell Hilda I say...” Dimitri pauses. Gears turn. Turn. Catch. “Hello, Hilda.”

Claude snorts, giggles, giggle-snorts. “Stars, you’re a dork.”

He saunters up, puts one of the paper plates on the table, and shakes a small pile of half-raw half-burnt curly spuds in its general vicinity. Some even make it onto the plate. “There. Pay me back by comin’ over to do this sometime there’s not a fuckin’ crisis, okay?” On his way out the door, he looks at Edelgard and winks. “Nice getting to know ya, El. Get some sleep.”

It slips out against her will.

“You, too.”

Like Sisyphus just laying on the ground and allowing the bolder flatten him to death, Edelgard forces herself to fall asleep before she can even see the door close.

**Author's Note:**

> hello again. just tidied up the formatting a little on this ol thing. if you wanna bug me on twitter, i have one now! @goofylionking


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